May Day After-Party

After the May Day rally, make it an evening. Head over to the Wise Hall for music and refreshments. A food cart will be available for dinner. Upstairs join us for live music starting at 8:30pm. Tickets are $10 for general admission, $8 with a sticker from the rally and the first 50 low wage workers get in free!

Wise Hall is a unionized establishment and a terrific place to spend the evening on May Day.

Three bands will be playing: Brown Paper Bag, Jess Lebourdais, and Ripple Illusion. It promises to be a great night!Click on the band name to hear their groove. More information about each band is available below.

Brown Paper Bag is a trip into classic soul, gospel and blues. Original RnB tunes are played alongside well known and rarer cuts from the Motown and Stax collections, each infused with spontaneity, dynamics and a true love ensemble playing. Fans of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Albert King and Ray Charles will find that one evening dancing to Brown Paper Bag is not enough. With Ian Beaty (lead vox, bass), Noah Walker (guitar, vox) and Ryan Davis, (drums)

Ripple Illusion

Ripple Illusion is a fresh take on a retro sound, mixing together musical influences from a variety of different eras. Blending inspirations ranging from Motown to R&B and modern rock, the band has created a truly unique brand of piano driven rock and roll. The band was created in fall 2014 by Mike Turner, also of the accomplished Canadian

Rock and Roll outfit Damn Fools. Inspired by his experience in the 2014 Peak Performance Project, Turner decided to join forces with longtime friend and blues musician, Caroline Allatt. Together, they realized their musical influences were complimentary and they began incorporating tight vocal harmonies into the fabric of Turner’s dynamic instrumentation and musical arrangements. The band recorded their self-titled debut EP in late 2014, which is due out in May 2015. The EP opens with "Back to the Start", a song that seamlessly weaves between hard hitting rock and dreamy R&B balladry to deliver an infectiously hopeful message. From there, the album consistently returns to the theme of longing for truth in a world that provides us mere illusions. The band will be hitting the road across BC & Alberta this summer in support of their self-titled EP. From there, the future looks promising for a group that seems to have all the tools to be a large part of Canada’s music scene for years to come.

Jess Lebourdais

Acoustic Punk from Vancouver. Singer with broken guitar, following the path of others that have come before.

"Hardcore guys sing folk songs all the time, but no one belts them out like LeBourdais. No one can capture the honesty, the raw emotion quite the way he can. These aren't your average sing-along songs, but you'll find yourself singing along anyway." — CBC Music

"Imagine yourself around a campfire built from pallets and rubber tires, everyone’s drunk on whiskey, singing and dancing like they do in old Western films. One person has even managed to drag a piano out into the wilderness. Except this party is raging on in your living room and the fire alarms have been yanked out of the ceiling. Unharnessed and wild, a bluegrass band lead by a drunkard’s crackling voice calls out beyond the roaring flames. This is the sound of Jesse LeBourdais" - Discorder Magazine